Diseases in Tropical Fish

Medicating Your Fish

(The First Tank Guide)

Selecting the Right Medication for Your Fish

When you decide to medicate your fish evaluate the medications
available, and compare the symptoms they claim to treat to the
symptoms your fish have.

Unfortunately, very few fish diseases
are readily distinguishable to the untrained eye, and many diseases
can only be accurately diagnosed through a necropsy or biopsy. Some
even require special laboratory culturing for proper diagnosis, just
as with human diseases.

Short of seeing a licensed veterinarian, your best bet is the best
match of treatment to symptom. This often involves standing in front
of the medication rack in the pet store and
reading the labels of most of the medications.

Never accept (or trust) amateur diagnosis, especially not a
diagnosis given sight unseen. No honest aquarium expert or
professional will tell you what your fish has without consulting with
a veterinarian - a veterinarian who
has examined the fish in question. Some pet store employees will help
you select medication, but the good ones will be asking you about
symptoms and then pointing you to medications that claim to treat that
symptom. If the employee is telling you which medication to use based
on a very brief description of what you think the fish has, don't
expect their advice to be any better than your guess.

What About the Costs of Treatment?

Also, remember the fish and the costs involved in treating a
disease. In some cases, it may be better for the fish (or for the
finances of the fish keeper) to euthanize a diseased fish. This can
put the fish out of its misery, and prevent long-time suffering as you
try different medications looking for a correct match. Many fish can
be euthanized by putting them in a container of water and freezing it,
or you could try putting the fish in a solution of 1 part water and 2
parts hard liquor. This decision has to be made by the individual fish
keeper, and cannot be recommended to all people.

I do not advise keeping your fish in a constant tonic of
medications. As I mentioned on the disease
page, medications are stressful to the fish and can actually
increase their disease susceptibility. Also, if your tank is already
medicated and the fish do get sick, the disease organisms that are
infecting the fish are already immune to the medication you are
keeping in your tank. It is also important that you complete full
medication cycles any time you start medicating your tank. Even if
your fish look better, the disease organism may still be present in
the water, and those individual pathogens that have survived part of a
treatment cycle are going to be more resistant to the medication than
those that died earlier in the cycle. Medicating constantly and
failure to complete medication cycles results in pathogens that are
harder to treat next time. This also affects other fish keepers, as
these medication-resistant pathogens spread from tank to tank.

Some fish keepers use salt baths or salt tonics to treat fish. This
can be very successful for many diseases, but not all. Using a
properly designed medication will give better results and be less
stressful on the fish. Some fish also will not tolerate the added salt
content in the water, so the salt treatment may be toxic to your
fish. I do not recommend using a salt bath to treat fish for this
reason, and because many fish can be sensitive to the salt content in
their water, I do not recommend adding salt to a freshwater aquarium.
However, if you do decide to treat your fish with salt, it is very
important that you use a freshwater aquarium salt, as most salt that
is not designed for aquarium fish contains Iodine, a nutrient
necessary for people, but often toxic to fish.

Also remember to remove any carbon from your filter before medicating your aquarium, as
the carbon, if it is working, should remove the medication from the
water in under an hour, and if the medication is removed this quickly,
you are not treating the fish. If the carbon is not able to remove the
medication from the water this quickly, then it is saturated and
should be replaced.

"Thank you so much Keith. You have no idea just how helpful you are to beginners like me who don't know what they are doing but want to do everything right. Your quick response and helpful information will hopefully save my fish who are still doing okay for now."